So, when I first saw newsflashes about this at some places, I just couldn't see the novelty in it (since it's not some actual device that you can buy, but basically a research proof-of-concept of a classical projector-camera pairing with depth and surface estimation based on projected patterns). Then, after talking to some people outside the related field, it turned out a lot of people don't know much about projecting to non-homogeneous and/or non-flat surfaces. For such people, Googling for video mapping should clear up a lot of this topic. Yes, this time they are using Kinect, which can make depth and structure estimation easier in a small room, and the effects seem nice enough, however, I just don't see what all the fuss is about. Even the paper lists implementation and feedback analysis as contributions, an I'm sorry but I just can't see the novelties in there to justify a scientific publication. A tech demo, sure, since it's working, it's highly visual and entertaining, can be a crowd pleaser. But other than that...

"cost of cleaning their desktops and servers by more conventional means to 130,000 Euro"

Whoa, whoa, wait people, I'll clean them for half of that price and still be happy with it.

They'd need to look into more efficient "conventional means".

The problem with this banning is that they _think_ these toxins cause the dying-out of the bees. Actually there are plenty of regions where they use them and they didn't see a decrease in bee population. In such regions this banning could mean a lot of problems, e.g. the need to find and switch to some other chemicals which could bring some other unforeseen problems - since the one banned is used for a long time, most effects and side-effects are failry known. But, since they don't really have a clue what causes the bees dying, this banning might just simply have no effect, only cause problems. They might say they're just banning it temporarily for seeing what happens, but it's not that easy when this decision can effect whole countries' agriculture.

Also, I could bet on these 3 million signatures come mostly from green-fanatic city-dwellers who know nothing about bees, or agriculture, or agriculturural economics. They'd probably vote for banning all kinds of chemicals, until the point when food prices hike to the sky or they all die of hunger.

Well, at this point, we can only wait and see.

" avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits"

Well, whether it would be an avalanche or not, would remain to be seen. However, no company should've gotten that broad freedom of data use as they had in the first place, so however late it is, the proper thing to do is to allow individuals to see how companies handle their data and what they do with it.

Regarding lawsuits, them being "afraid" of lawsuits means that they already think there would be reason for lawsuits, which in turn gives a lot of reasons to even more demand for proper data privacy laws. User data handling should be controlled in a way that people wouldn't have reason to sue. Yes, dream on.

Anyway, whatever privacy laws would be better than the current state of do-whatever-you-want and change your terms of service by the weather approach most companies follow.

I'm sorry but as someone working in research I have to say that these fake journals are causing problems in our mailboxes (i.e. more spam to filter), otherwise they don't matter at all. What I mean is, those who wish to publish, will either know the relevant journals of their area, or - if they are early in their careers - their supervisors and colleagues will know them.

Additionally, in all normal research institutes and universities people will want to publish in journals that have a registered - and not negligible - impact factor, which the fakes will not have.

Also, when looking into a journal that you never published in, the first thing you look at is the IF, the second thing you look at is the organization backing it, and the third thing you look at are the members of the editorial board. All have to be at least somewhat relevant. If you can't judge it, always ask someone from your field with more experience. It's not hard to get such help.

So, while the high number of fake journals seems high, I'd say those who willingly (silly) or unknowingly (ignorant) publish in them deserve what they end up with.

As always, as a researcher, what you publish is what people will judge you by, so always be inquisitive, careful and selective.

I've seen so many of these you-just-don't-get-it people in- and outside of tech, and in all cases it is very angering. Even more so when people "in power" make such statements, showing they have absolutely no clue about what they're dealing with and in that instant you see how you and a lot of other people will s*ck big time because of these guys. While gaming-related always-on internet DRM is not something that would shake the world of all people, it is something to be worried about, since it contributes toward reaching that feared point in time where everything will require always-on DRM - and do believe in that will make your life miserable.

Specifically, in these always-on internet-based DRM schemes, what angers me most is that 1). you simply can't access content (in this case the game) if your connection has problems or - which is much more frequent - the provider of the content - e.g. the game servers - have problems, and 2). if the content provider decides they want to go out of businnes or release a new platform/content/game and close down the old one then there's nothing you can do. Basically your access to the content/game and your history is at the mecry of the provider and you can only access/play until they let you. This angers me much more than "simple" DRM.

All in all, the DRM everyone now sees to want to deploy everywhere is just not good, and it's definitely not nice or user friendly, at all.

I would say next, that if they want to remain in businness, they need to be more user friendly, but look out there and see that they still get enough users to be profitable, despite all the bad DRM schemes... Most average users/prople just don't know, and don't care enough to raise havoc about this, they just go along with it.

" to treat any violation of a website's Terms of Service â" or an employer's Terms of Use policy â" as a criminal act."

Actually the article says "if you violate the terms of service on a government website ", so it wouldn't apply to your neighbor&dog's websites or Facebook. Otherwise, since in the US most ToSs can be changed as the weather changes, overnight and every minute, every website operator could turn their users into criminals as they wish. Which would be a tad ridiculous.

"and simply bury some button down in the privacy settings that defaults to consent"

Neh, nothing like that, just a popup at the first powerup saying "I forever agree to everything in the daily changing terms of service" with two buttons, OK and "I agree". Not that it would matter, anyone who would buy a Facebook phone would not loose a second's sleep over that.

"Not cool. Jokes about forking repo's in a sexual way and "big" dongles. Right behind me"

Well, lots will dismiss me as ehh-another-d*ck, but I have to say, this whole thing seems, looks, smells like one of the top10 stupid things I ever heard. Let me write this down: today you can loose your job for telling a "sexist" joke? Really? For talking about big dongles in the presence of a woman? Really? I'd say this really was a sexist move, but not from the guys. I know some really prude american women, but man, even they wouldn't do such a move over a big dongle joke or a forking [again: really? :) geez] joke.

And about tweets having power... some people having a large number of followers who pick up every crazy idea, scary stuff.

"If they start teaching code in high school, EVERYONE will consider themselves a programmer, and the market will completely dry up."

We - several kids in my school - were taught programming in elementary school (zx spectrum, c+4/16 era) it was optional and extra-curricular but still) and in high school (where I was in a math-CS spec. class). After high school only around 20% of my class went to CS or IT related universities and jobs later. If 20% of everyone who learnt proper coding became a programmer, the US would have no shortage of them. The problem you are referring to is when people who didn't learn proper programming are considering themselves professionals and flood the job market with unusable "talent".

" 'If pervasive, ubiquitous networked cameras ultimately make public privacy impossible, which seems likely, then at least we can balance the scales by ensuring that we have two-way transparency between the powerful and the powerless."

Well, may be so, however, I still won't tolerate you coming to my home, to my gym, to my office, to my restaurant, to my pub, etc. wearing a camera. You can choose to loose your privacy somewhere else.

I love Debian... but for the desktop? It doesn't work that well.

Your desktop is not everyone else's desktop. I work on a Debian testing development machine every day and it's beyond awesome. Now, if you'd say it doesn't work that well for everyone, I would agree. And for avoiding yet another Debian vs. flamewar, I'm stopping here :)

"Is sustained focus even possible in mass audiences anymore? If not, what have we lost?"

Of course it is possible. It requires only one thing: quality performance. If you pick the wrong topic, and you combine it with awful realization, all you get is a couldn't-care-less audience. A lot of people say that it's because today's audience is inferior in many ways, but I don't agree with that. If you create a really good performance, people will like it. And that doesn't mean that you have to make something shocking, disruptive or gory, and it doesn't have to always be interactive either. Also, I'd like to add, that I'm not an "older patron", but if I'd see someone playing with their phones during a performance, I'd just like to smack'em hard. It's not like someone forces you to sit through something you don't like. And even if you don't like it, that's no reason to worsen others' experience.

One more thing: "The core audiences of the theater, opera, and symphonyâ"older, white, well-to-do elites [...]" - Really? I mean... really?! This seems crazy to such an extent I can't even easily wrap my head around it. Holy crap. You people should really visit Europe more. I'm serious. I've been to a number of theatres and concerts (meaning jazz, classical, and similar, not big summer festivals) in some european countries, and sometimes even I'm surprised by the percentage of younger (i.e. approx. 16-30) attendees.

"More and more Americans, for instance, hail from cultures in which art tends to be participatory [...] rather than something to passively observe." - I have to say, I've never felt "passive" during a couple-of-hours long concert. If you do, either the performance is junk (it happens, unfortunately), or you really should find something that you like and stop torturing yourself.

So, data transfer using modulated signals. From a prior art point of view, it shouldn't matter what the frequency of the signal is (i.e. is it audible or not), everything working along the ideas of a modem or radio signal should count as prior art. There are a lot of miserable patents which only differ from prior stuff because they are implemented in/on a mobile device, and this sounds (pun intended) no different.

Thing is, a quarter might just not be enough to discover all flaws and holes in the current release, before the next one comes along, fixing some and introducing new ones, which we again won't have time to fix. And the problem is, malware authors are faster than any release or fix you can come up with, so while a frequent release cycle might decrease official 0day vulnerability lists, which might be a good PR-point, I'm not sure it will help anyone in the long run. Also, if we have a short release cycle, who thinks MS will spend any time and recources on fixing a release being 4-5-6 cycles old? It's not that I don't trust MS releasing non-flawed sw, but I don't, and I don't know anyone who does, righfully so.